The former host of the 1993-98 PBS children's show, "Bill Nye, the Science Guy," has emerged as the most celebrated — and effective — spokesman from the left on climate change, the New Republic reports, pointing to, as an example, a matchup with Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn on "Meet The Press" in February where Nye dominated the debate.

And the White House loves him.

"He's been instrumental in helping advance some of the president's key initiatives to make sure we can out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the world," an official said in the January edition of Mother Jones magazine.

The magazine quoted another official gushing: "The president lights up when he sees Bill."

There's not a hint of a political bent on Nye's eclectic resume that includes an engineering background at Boeing and a stint as a writer and actor on a Seattle sketch comedy show "Almost Live!"

He moved closer to his science roots in 2005, when he became vice president of the Planetary Society, founded by Carl Sagan in 1980 and now one of the country’s largest interstellar-science NGOs, the New Republic noted.

But lately, Nye's become better known for his politically-charged science, the New Republic reported — taking on the contentious climate-change debate.

"I fight this fight out of patriotism," Nye told Mother Jones magazine in his January interview. "We have a problem. We can't have economic growth without basic investment in science and research. And we can't have irresponsible school board members in Texas teaching that the earth is 10,000 years old.

"We can't have us embracing scientific illiteracy."

"It's a war he probably won't win," the New Republic writes. "If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can't convince the diehard climate-change deniers, the Science Guy probably doesn’t stand a chance. But his performance so far hasn't disappointed, and that's exactly the point: It's a performance."